Baa to the statutory warning

A goat prefers the taste of nicotine to grass.

Smokers in north Gujarat's Jotana town are a worried lot these days. Not because they've suddenly realised that cigarette smoking causes cancer.

But because every time they light up, chances are that a big black goat charges out of nowhere, aiming for the cigarette dangling from their lips and begins smoking.

For three years, the smoking goat of Jotana has been a source of curious amusement as well as annoyance to both local residents and visitors. The sight is bizarre. The goat puffs and inhales like any regular smoker.

In fact, given a choice between its food and a cigarette, it prefers a cigarette. According to a local shopkeeper, Ravishankar Raval, it smokes 20 cigarettes a day, all offered to it by local people and visitors to the town and, of course, sometimes snatched from unsuspecting victims.

The goat took to smoking purely by accident. It started when some bidi-smokers noticed how the animal relished the smoke that they were blowing on its face. They then placed a bidi in its nose and to their astonishment, it began inhaling. Slowly, the goat graduated to more expensive cigarettes.

Since then, the goat has been known to leap upon unsuspecting smokers to share a puff. Last fortnight, for instance, it scared the living daylights out of a camel-cart driver passing through the town when it leapt upon the moving cart from behind.

The driver thought he was being attacked by a panther or some other wild animal until he saw that it was actually a goat that was just making a beeline for his bidi.

Although the goat has been making quite a a nuisance of itself, the people of Jotana are unwilling to take any action against it because they regard goats as holy animals. Its milk is also used to feed infants. They are nobody's property in particular but belong to everybody in general.

In fact, the people here don't even sacrifice goats to appease the gods. Even after buying a goat, the owner only slits one of its ears slightly and then sets it free. Under the circumstances, any move against the animal would really, well, get their goat.